


Devils Like You

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 19 i dont feel like rewriting that entire tag, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Homestuck Kidswap, PWP but the plot is in the porn. the medium is the message., Porn With Feelings but evil and fucked up feelings, Rose Strider - Freeform, Trans Female Rose Lalonde, Trans Female Vriska Serket, Trans Rose Lalonde, Trans Vriska Serket, Violent Sex, and we were both girls?, characters in this au started their Quest at age 16 and are now abouts 18 to 18, gleeful ignorance of eridan ampora's pesterquest characterization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23985589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Your name is ROSE STRIDER, and you will revolutionize xenobiology, or die trying. Either way, it will be at Vriska's hands.(or, TRANSGIRL POWERVIOLENCE; or, THE INHERENTLY EROTIC NATURE OF JIUJITSU.)Potential triggers: bad etiquette for violent sex, gender dysphoria.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Vriska Serket
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41
Collections: Anonymous





	Devils Like You

**Author's Note:**

> Kidswap AU; wherein the Strilondes and the Harleyberts have been raised by each other's guardians. Yes, I live in my own heart.

No one on the ship bothers keeping track of time anymore. A twenty-four hour clock is patently ridiculous. There is no planetary revolution for the “day” to pivot around. It’s just your ship and the distant speck of the new universe you hurtle towards. Above deck, illumination is an uninterrupted soft neon green glow; below, artificial. So biological clocks are shot too. You all sleep and wake up in careless asynchrony. Dave doesn’t do much other than sun salutations during what he estimates as morning, and surrendering to marijuana slumber. The closest thing to productivity he’s conjured up is a studious catalog of the weed strains he’s planted, some of them breeds of his own, each more pestilent than the last. Karkat doesn’t enjoy getting stoned nor meditating, but he’s content with following Dave around like a smitten puppy, under the guise of antagonism. Vriska and Terezi are either sleeping at the exact time you do, or they are sustained by perennial directionless mania. Kanaya has no idea how the distinct diurnal schedule that made her an outlier on Alternia even operates now. So no one on the ship bothers keeping track of time anymore.  


No one except you.  


You wake up to the sound of your alarm clock. Sometimes you beat it by a couple of minutes. You step out of bed and stretch upwards until the temptation to slide back under the covers has been shaken off. You get a daybreak hour of training done with your new dummy, Jaspers Junior, the original having been left behind in your collapsing session. You shower and enjoy the benefits of a healthy, savory, balanced breakfast instead of the double-scoop protein shakes you’d daily drink on Earth. You turn down Dave’s offer to join him on the yoga mat, or sometimes you don’t - you’ll never get into the om-shanti of it all, but as far as improving proprioception goes, its primacy is indisputable. You definitely do turn down his offer to “wake and bake”, notwithstanding that you wakened two hours ago already. You waste an hour browsing the countable multiversal infinity of action films with abysmal plots starring beautiful girls in leather jackets, tight jeans and makeup that will stay unrealistically intact during the entirety of the runtime, until you settle on something to pirate. You have lunch with Kanaya. You have coffee and tea with Kanaya. You read a book next to Kanaya. You listen to music next to Kanaya. You wander the ship, trying to find the one who will dare quench the parched land your heart has taken root in, that desert-city dweller instinct of survival that, at your worst, urges you to strike first so you’ll strike last, the only way it can be quenched: with a good fight. No one does, but sometimes they humor you with a tabletop wargame. Vriska and Terezi proved to be more adept than you already, a benefit of having had friends to square off with. To everyone else’s credit, they’ve gotten quite good too, if only through a dogged necessity to not give either of them the chance to smile smugly in victory. You perform maintenance on your cache of weapons. You have a spat with five other deviant palates in cinema over who gets to play tastemaker tonight; most often, this ends in the group splitting in three to each watch a separate movie. You go through your evening training. Sometimes you find that, even after an extenuating hour of exercise, you can still smell Kanaya’s lingering perfume, like her ghostly hands were tugging at that door, heavy and unbreachable, that you didn’t even know you were keeping closed, and you think of the absurdity of the death-black lipstick highlighting her fangs that, flipped another way, turns into a chainsaw that she possesses the monstrous strength to wield into live combat, not that anyone would ever know by looking at those eyes always lidded as if halfway through a sigh, her willowy figure made to fit in a backless halterneck. So sometimes you have sex with Kanaya. More and more you have sex with Kanaya. You mark off your calendar and you go to sleep. The irony of your title as Prince, Destroyer, of Time, does not escape you, but for a thing to be destroyed, it first must have existed. You are the only one on the ship keeping time.  


It has been nine hundred and twenty one days since you met Vriska Serket and you cannot stand it anymore.  


Not that you cannot stand her. Or rather, that is exactly it. You know that you are the same beast, raised in the same blood and mud. You see it in her eyes darting about a room, even a familiar one, to ascertain the least exposed place to sit, and always choosing the one furthest away from the biggest threat, from you. You see it in her restless drive to measure herself against others with the explicit intent of winning, sportsmanship be damned. You see it in her justified arrogance during games of Risk. She throws the dice with enough spectacle to scare off lesser enemies, but never so far that she could not retrieve them in the blink of a fool’s eye. You wouldn’t have thought such displays of might could befit game pieces - then you remember that, to her, they are not game pieces. She holds the dice in her fist when she’s thinking, running the thumbs over their aristas, the way she must hold the enchanted implements she keeps hidden in her left pocket before she unleashes ruination upon a hapless opponent. You know it’s her left pocket because that’s where her hand comes to rest when she’s relaxed. Or as close to relaxing as devils like you get.  


So it makes your blood boil that she won’t fight you. It is as if she had learnt to win the game without ever learning the rules. In flagrant contradiction to her status as deadliest of her crew, Vriska doesn’t understand that there is no turning down a fight. The fight does not ask. The fight happens. It is immediate and inevitable. The strictures of social nicety have constrained you from simply getting a fight from her, without having to ask. The exact regulations you’d hoped she would be unbound by, she uses to shield herself. Does she fear you? You have, then, to laugh, when you consider that her body count surpasses yours by orders of magnitude. It is not as if she stumbled upon those kills by accident. Though she might as well have, with her childish weapon of choice that matures not along with the warrior, instead choosing to careen with luck. If she thinks holding fickle fate in her hands feels powerful, she ought to taste the unerring perfection of a honed sword-hand. It has to be more powerful. You have to show her.  


You suspect she feels the same about you. You wouldn’t purport to elucidate the details; if you fell into her preposterous flights of fancy, you might never climb out. But sometimes, when she would be regaling others with that practiced sneer and a laugh somewhere between imperious and grating, she would meet your eyes. Tilt her chin downwards so that you could meet hers too. And stay there. Both of you with your jaws locked and your heartbeat in your ears. Never long enough for anyone to notice before she once again began the dance of ribald and ripostes. She’s better than you at... people, in general. You have no qualms in admitting this. She grew up with a crew of friends she loved as much as she chewed up and spit out; you grew up with nothing worth dwelling on. This does mean that you’ve missed out on the vicissitudes of romance. Kanaya, your first and yet only partner, draws from a well of seemingly infinite affection with, you have been tempted to believe, no strings attached. It is radiant but cozy like the few cloudy days of early spring, before the heat sets in always earlier than you expect. Being held by someone who you admire but whose mutual admiration you don’t have to earn - it fulfills needs whose existence you once did not even suspect. But there are more torrid needs you have had names for all your life, and the gnashing of their teeth can no longer be silenced. When Kanaya explained to you kismesissitude, she did so with misgivings on a human’s capability to originate such ardors. They are, she said, an Eminent Biological Necessity For Trolls, not so for your supple-fleshed species autochthonous to a forgiving planet. You countered with the observation that you’ve grown as strong as any of them, against the odds of your feeble biology. That must mean it is not a question of neurological predisposition, but of how one learns to cut their way across the world. She said that While You Posit A Theory That Might Yet Prove Revolutionary To The Nascent Art Of Xenobiology The Burden Of Proof Is Quite Daunting To Fulfill, and, upon witnessing your resulting silence, moved on to explaining auspistice (which, as far as you grasped, is little more than a three-wheeled mechanism for robbing kismesissitude of all its excitement).  


Burden of proof indeed. You don’t bother knocking on Vriska’s door. She’s lying in bed, perusing a book whose thickness belies its surely trifling fantasy. One eye a coaly smoulder, the other her strange eightfold flower. Both glare acid at you from behind the pages.  


VRISKA: Do you mind????????  


She makes no effort to disguise her vexation, but neither does she get off her ass and make the most minimal effort to remove the object of her irritation. Your loathing for her, encapsulated. Well, you may lack her command over the finer points of pushing buttons, but the following tactic works just as well:  


ROSE: Vriska Serket, I completely fucking hate you.  


For the most fleeting of moments, you believe that the arching of her eyebrows will be followed by the rest of her body. She’ll spring, taut yet lithe, for the Fluorite Octet lying at her bedside, or maybe choose to demonstrate a staggering talent for coaxing lethality out of a hardcover copy of “Treachery Beneath The Mast”. Neither of these futures unfold. Instead, the book plops unceremoniously to her chest when her hands find themselves suddenly occupied with containing a fit of laughter, one on her forehead, the other on her stomach. You wish you knew what your gaffe was, so you could be offended. Instead, you stand in the doorframe cross-armed and bewildered, almost wishing you could view yourself through her eyes. You feel a horrible premonition - about to be proven right, as all your premonitions are - that she is about to clarify, whether you want her to or not.  


VRISKA: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!  
VRISKA: Hahahahahahahaha.  
VRISKA: Whew. Okay.  
VRISKA: Hahahaha. Ha ha. Ha. Ha. F8ck, holy sh8.  


Scarcely you’ve heard her unrehearsed laughter before. There is, to be sure, a sincerity to her scornful mirth; she does enjoy handily bowling over most of anyone who isn’t you. But this convulsive fit of hysterics is a private spectacle reserved for those who manage to catch her off guard. She even kicks her feet into the air with glee. Indeed, once she manages to get a hold of herself, her trademark smirk returns to tinge the last few drops of her giggling spree a cruel azure. Vriska moves to the total opposite of her position; now she is belly-down, face where her feet were a second ago, chin resting on one hand, the other tracing circles into the bedsheets as she talks. A performative gesture with the singular purpose of jeering every barb with the maximum amount of condescension. All for you.  


VRISKA: So, let me get this str8.  
VRISKA: All that chasing me around 8egging for a fight was 8ecause you have a huge stupid crush on me.  
VRISKA: Someone told you a8out quadrants, 8ecause you don’t even understand your regular human m8spritship. Kanaya, I 8et. And you thought hey, if I can’t romance this drop dead sexy troll girl the normal way, may8e I can flirt with her pitchways like that’s something humans can even DO.  
VRISKA: Did I get all that right first try?  


Ugh. She’s good. If you press onward, you are in essence admitting to her accusations. And backing up would make you appear as nothing short of irrational. You almost go agape before reconsidering the first option - with nothing but judicious application of mockery, she’s made you embarrassed of the very enterprise that brought you here. You shake off the extraneous shame and stick to the plan.  


ROSE: That’s quite the barrage of invective.  
ROSE: Enough that any third party observer would place the onus of pitch flirting on you.  


She giggles another of her high-pitched torments before deigning at last to slip out of bed. Her sneakers get kicked out of the way as she approaches, and she towers over you. Always and again, the farce of instinct. You know, in your rational mind and in the calluses of your hands, that your lowered center of gravity is an advantage for throwing this lanky, weightless girl. But she is half a head taller than you. The dumb reptilian side of your brain finds it excruciating.  


VRISKA: You insuffera8le fucking moron.  
VRISKA: Do you seriously 8elieve this is how pitch flirting works? Just 8arge into a girl’s hive and scream at her that SHE’S got the hots for YOU????????  
ROSE: You didn’t say no.  
VRISKA: That’s 8ecause I’m 8usy insulting you!!!!!!!!  
VRISKA: And 8efore you interrupt me just to say that’s 8ecause I’m crushing on you again-  


Fuck, you were just about to.  


VRISKA: -I’m out of your league, Strider!  
VRISKA: I’m out of your league in 8very possi8le way!  
VRISKA: I’m too 8eautiful for you. I’m too smart for you.  
ROSE: You’re not smarter than me.  
VRISKA: I 8eat you in every game we play!  
ROSE: You’ve had more time to practice.  
VRISKA: Hahahahahahahaha, so I have TOO MANY FRIENDS for you!  


When Vriska thinks she’s being particularly cutthroat, her voice cracks. It is, to your chagrin, enrapturing.  


VRISKA: And, what REALLY pisses you off, I’m too strong for you.  
ROSE: Prove it.  
VRISKA: I don’t have to! You’ve heard of my exploits. Every sad sack on this ridiculous ship has.  
VRISKA: I’m the stuff of legends, Strider. You’re a 8ackw8r hick who thinks two swords make a samurai.  
ROSE: Kicking my ass should prove effortless, then.  
VRISKA: Huh????????  
ROSE: Do it. Kick my ass.  


You’re drawing so close. Her hands threaten to clench, the left more than the right one. Harsh overhead lighting sculpts her face into a rictus of shadows. Shadows and fangs, your terrible weakness. Blue lipstick. So much hair, miles and miles of hair. Holy shit, Rose Strider, pull yourself together.  


VRISKA: What is your terminal f8cking issue?  
VRISKA: Not with me. I don’t give a sh8 what qui88les your overcooked little thinkpan dares dream it has with me.  
VRISKA: In general. With everyone and with yourself.  
VRISKA: Me and every other troll started killing since we were strong enough to lift a 8oxcutter, and we don’t go around 8egging to get gutted.  
VRISKA: I mean, we were raised 8y 8EASTS. You can’t 8egin to imagine what it was like, 8ut YOU’RE the one that doesn’t know how to knock on doors. So who 8roke you?  
VRISKA: Haha, w8. I know exactly who 8roke you. I know everything a8out you, and don’t you ever forg8 that.  
VRISKA: Aw, the penthouse princess got spanked too hard. Now she can’t tell the difference 8etween hugging and sta88ing. Does she need a little tough love? Would that remind her of her lusus?  


You are exerting an immense amount of willpower to not escalate into physicality. You want her to start the fight, to become unbound. But Vriska’s hand lifts away from her pocket and aims at your chest, accusatory index leading. She has a punchline coming, and she’s about to punctuate it with her finger jabbed into your sternum.  


No.  


You whip Vriska’s throat with the edge where your wrist and your forearm greet. The chop slaughters whatever follow-up she had and leaves in its stead a ruined sputtering. Her eyes bulge in shock, incapable of narrowing with the laser-focused hatred you know you’ll see very soon. But before that can happen, you must secure the upper hand. You fire your shin, weaponized through years of conditioning against unforgiving wood, into the inside of Vriska’s thigh, and she collapses to her knees. Now you’re the one lording over her. That’s better. She doesn’t even realize she’s grabbing on to your calf for balance, and you let her, because you know help hurts devils like you.  


ROSE: And you?  
ROSE: You’ve never tricked anyone with your theatrical heroisms. But especially not me.  
ROSE: No one who grew up easily loved has such a fondness for violence, whether or not they can fool themselves with atavistic tales of daring.  
ROSE: And look at you, you’re not even good at it.  
ROSE: You’re spoiled saccharine. Mordant and corrosive, yet at the same time, a piteous, sniveling babe.  
ROSE: You don’t get to hide anymore. Spill your guts through words or through combat.  


Vriska’s respiration stabilizes along with a meeting of the eyes. Gone is her combative merriment. Replacing it is a mask of clarified revenge. No one this supercilious likes to lose. So you’ll never be able to tell Vriska just how heartbreakingly well she wears wounded pride.  


It’s a flash in the pan, and then Vriska’s face is lost under her oceans of hair, as she lunges into your exposed leg. Fuck, maybe you should have kicked her off. You tuck your chin to protect the sensitive occipital, and it still rams into the hardwood on the way down. Your least favorite place to get hit in - it stings and lingers no matter how minimal the damage. And if it’s not minimal, that’s a guaranteed concussion; also your least favorite injury to get, because it’s just about the only one that warrants discontinuing the fracas. It would be beyond humiliating to faint now. You fall to the floor. She falls atop you. You buck away as soon as her head thumps your stomach, but she’s already scrambling across your legs to mount your waist, and every twist you give is met with an equal counterweight. Yes, she’s wiry like a toothpick, but, just as you suspected, there is a predator’s strength coiled within. And she has technique. You underestimated at least that much, rather expecting her to fight like an animal. She brings her weight to bear against your sternum and all your leverage is obviated. Her knees entangle beneath your armpits, forcing your hands away from effective reach. You are immobile in her web. A low growl emanates from her grimace, between the exposed front rows of her carnivore’s teeth. Her hair, already a disaster on the best of days, curtains in loose strands around her face. Her chest heaves with the effort of keeping up with the sudden spike in heart rate. At last, here is the monster you’ve been hunting, and it’s winning over you. From this position, there is naught to it but to counter her attempt at transitioning into a submission. An armbar, likely, there not being enough space between your head and the wall for a choke.  


None of the above. Her nails, her long, sharp nails, functional alien keratin that has retained its primal purpose as ripper of throats, dig into one of the sides of your neck. Not deep enough to reach anything important, and not that both of you haven’t been granted a boon of immortality by Skaia’s consecration. But they stay there, grating against your dermis. Blood pools out of the wounds and into the grooves of her cuticles.  


VRISKA: You like hearing yourself talk.  
VRISKA: Waaaaaaaay. Too. Much  


Even with her breath ragged, she drawls out her assertion with all of the usual melodrama. She’s enjoying herself. You bite through the pain to throw your Hail Mary:  


ROSE: Do you hate it?  


She jerks into an offbeat stop-and-go of giggles, one of them turning into a snort. Your heart gallops in your chest and then flatlines when she lowers her body to meet yours. Her entire body. Her hips slide down to your waist, the rest of her weight pressing down against your chest such that you’re still trapped. You can feel the blood pumping through her veins, the air hissing with the words she spits directly into your face.  


VRISKA: You’re so fucking 8ad at this.  
VRISKA: You’re lucky you’re so profoundly horrendous.  


You’ve gotten exorbitant amounts of practice in kissing over the last two years or so. You take it deathly serious, the only way you know how to take anything, and that mentality has differentiated you from pathetically shy into a kisser who gives as good as she can take. But Vriska’s lipstick is mesmerizing, and by the time you try to match her, you find you are helpless against her lead. Her lips kiss like a noose. Her weight on your chest is suffocating. You try to retreat for a second wind and find her tongue inside your open mouth. You don’t know if you’re dizzy with delight or oxygen deprivation. Kanaya, Kanaya, you love her, and she loves you so much it makes her shine. But touching her is hard, because she makes it so easy. You want it every day of your life, but the mood, the power to allow yourself such vulnerability snarls and bites if you touch the wrong place at the wrong time. It has been an epic of length enough to make Homer blush, allowing her to run her fingers over your thighs while fending off the knowledge that you’ve done nothing to earn her gentle ministrations. And some days you still can’t. Some days you have to take her hand off your legs as gently as you can manage without shaking, and stop for the night. Some days you slide into bed clothed and wordless and can bear nothing more than a light hug. Some days, not even that. This, though. Vriska. The smell of sweat, the taste of blood, the arrested breath. Crashing against a stone until you draw sanguine affection from it. This is right. This is good. She finally lets you gasp for air when you’re at the verge of unconsciousness, but not before digging her fangs into your lips so they come away glistening with blood.  


Her fangs. Your blood.  


Vriska sneaks one arm behind the crook of your neck to constrict your range of motion. Her head settles into the opposite side, and her breath tickles the hairs behind your ears before she bites you. Hard. Was that brazen bellow you, moaning? The newfound freedom of your hands unconsciously registers once they grab onto her hair. There's nearly no malice to it; you just need something to grab onto, to steady the tourbillion of emotion. But you’re here now, and it would be a waste to let this wild mane go unpulled. She replies with a muffled grunt and a redoubled effort in her bite. You’re seeing stars. You tug war, this competition and agreement, neither you nor her capable of quitting, and both of you safe in each other’s stubbornness. Like any good war, it does not end when you withdraw; it only escalates into unexplored territory. With the security of her top mount compromised in favor of feral biting, your hands can reach the spot between her knee and her groin where the nascent bruise you left gestates beneath her jeans. You squeeze, and she releases the bite with a soft noise of complaint. Adorable. You traverse up the inside of her thighs, wishing away the flimsy fabric keeping you from your new lover’s naked form. But she flinches when you reach her crotch. Not at all like the way she’s been rolling away from pain, then back into it, challenging you to grip harder. This is a profound, full-bodied flinch of fear. You’re already moving away, afraid you’ve transgressed an unspoken boundary of kismesissitude. You haven’t established a “safe word”, a concept whose usefulness you’ve found risible until this very moment. Would it even translate to this unmapped interspecies hatemance you’re in the very process of pioneering? Vriska’s face bolts up to yours, and it is joyless.  


VRISKA: Not there.  


It is no acerbic provocation. It is a statement of fact, serious as a fucking heart attack. There is no particular region in your body that generates this repellence, but the sentiment as a whole, you understand. The identical fissure in your psyche demands you sleep alone every once in a while, no matter how much you tell yourself you trust your beloved bedmate. Not there. Very well.  


ROSE: Anywhere else?  
VRISKA: I’ll let you know.  
VRISKA: ...  
VRISKA: Man, what a mood killer.  
ROSE: There are other ways we can christen our new kismesissitude.  
VRISKA: Hey, I never said we’re in spades now!  
ROSE: Yes, you were carving an entrenchment into my neck out of sheer camaraderie.  
ROSE: All that heated panting? The stirring passion of regular human friendship.  
VRISKA: Do you EVER shut up????????  
ROSE: You’ve yet to prove capable of silencing me.  


That gets her going again. Not an immediate return to full bore savagery, but you didn’t expect as much. It’s good enough to start at the part where her lips are so close to you that you can feel the rumble of her throat when she levels her threats.  


VRISKA: When I’m through with you, all you’re gonna 8e capa8le of doing is screaming.  


One hand pins your left shoulder, the other tugs at your tank top. She never had any intention of maintaining its integrity. No, she’s skipping straight to shredding the neck seams with her nails until they come unraveled, followed by the arm holes. From there, turning the shirt to ribbons is a trifling affair. She gives your body a lascivious once-over. Until the meteor, you’d never conceptualized your body as an object of attraction. You knew bodies, plural, could be; certainly you entertained long lonely nights with internet pornography. You are only human. But women in this basal artform were only allowed nubile, pliant physiques and personalities. You couldn’t identify with the men either, with their bodies sculpted for a vanity whose origin escaped you. None of them ever had the whiplike musculature you found in your mirrored figure. They were all bulk and abuse. An equation of demented authority where one side, always and only the male side, was allowed to slap the other like cattle. Never a given reason why, only the establishment that there was no rebelling against it. And your gender? Well: Vriska’s eyes tilt curiously at the novel mounds adorning your chest. It would be easy to tinker with captcha cards until you found some preposterously named potion that altered the entirety of your biology in one gulp. But you appearified your first dose of old-fashioned estrogen four months and six days ago. You enjoy the gradual change. You are the only one on the ship keeping time.  


All these thoughts fade away when Vriska runs her hand over your breasts. One of these gradual changes has been a geometric multiplication of your chest’s sensitivity. This time, you manage to muffle the moan by biting your hand, but she is relentless, tracing diminute circles atop your nipples. And then she pinches them, and it’s game over. Your penchant for noisy sex will be only gossip on the ship for the next two weeks. They can all go to hell. You have the only kismesissitude on the ship, you fought literal tooth and nail for it, and you will grab onto it for dear life. Or at least, grab on to Vriska’s hands and tug her closer to you once again. She’s flushed silly. You share as tender a kiss as you can muster through the hormonal haze urging you on and on. In this moment of relative peace, you find a sensation that’s slipped the overwhelming assault of pain and pleasure: you are dripping with excitement, and have been since your opening salvo.  


ROSE: Suck me off.  
VRISKA: You’re not in a position to give orders, 8itch.  
ROSE: You’re dying to. It’s the only part of my body you haven’t felt.  
VRISKA: 8eg for it.  
ROSE: Make me.  


Vriska’s expression shifts into a sardonic grin. You are witnessing the birth of some novel, tortuous malengine. Oh, no.  


VRISKA: I will.  


She slithers down to your jeans - much more practical, looser than hers -, down to the zipper your cock has been struggling against. Beneath awaits your athletic boyshorts, stained at the bulging apex with a slick of precum. She pries those free, too. You’re not quite throbbing hard; you don’t think you’re biologically capable of that anymore. But you are at the delirious peak of your sensitivity. You think you catch something in her eyes, a melancholy distance inexorably mixed with her concupiscence. It disappears when she bobs down once, halfway through, up with agonizing lentitude, leaving behind a cerulean stain. You’re powerless. You grip at the hardwood floor for something, anything to stabilize you, but you’re adrift. Next time, she comes down three-quarters deep. Then all the way to the base, and you buck your hips into her mouth. With just a few more seconds, you’re petrifyingly close to orgasm, like the very realization of your excitement had pushed you that much further towards the edge. But Vriska backs off, and you’re left there, aching for release, your hands balled into fists.  


ROSE: Ffffuck.  


Vriska crowns the tip of your cock with one kiss. Another lipstick stain. You buck your hips along with the shiver that runs down your spine.  


VRISKA: 8eg for it.  


Your attempt at “fuck you” or maybe another “make me” comes out as incomprehensible, needy gibberish. Not quite begging, yet. You manage to hang on until she traces one, two, three, four kisses from your tip, all the way down your length and into the base of your cock.  


VRISKA: 8eg for it.  


She rests her chin on one hand, draws circles atop the very center of your tip with the other, and that is about all you can bear.  


ROSE: Please.  


Vriska’s self-satisfied countenance is unendurable. You’ll have to get back at her - is the last logical thought you manage to form before her mouth closes again around your length. You’ll have to get back at her. She negotiates all the way down to your groin, and a numbing wave of pleasure obliterates you. The echoing of your own moans is the only thing you can process. Your own moans, and the orgasm bending your back into an arch, and the sight of Vriska’s leather jacket hanging on the wall. That’s her name you’re hearing pouring out of your lips, “Vriska” with every ounce of honey and venom you carry. This is right. This is good.  


-  


Epochs later, the waves slow. You come down from your empyrean ecstasy into an all-too-human buzz of exhaustion. Nuzzled into the scabbing crook of your neck, Vriska shares your afterglow. She seems to have no desire for reciprocation, and that is all right by you. There are more pressing questions to consider.  


ROSE: Are kismeses supposed to do this?  
VRISKA: What, cuddle?  
ROSE: Mhm. I expect I ought to be stabbed in exchange for letting my guard down.  
VRISKA: Well, I can do this.  


She presses her lips against your unhealed wound, eliciting an obnoxious tingle. For your part, you find the contusion atop her leg, chary not to head too far up, and squeeze it. You stay like this for a second, sweetly annoying each other.  


VRISKA: Really though, if I just gutted you I’d 8e out of a kismesis.  
VRISKA: So I’m pretty sure this is fine.  


She’s “pretty sure”? No way.  


ROSE: Am I your first kismesis?  


Now it’s your turn to wear the intolerable smirk and prop your head up on your arm. Vriska protests instantaneously.  


VRISKA: No way! No f8cking way!!!!!!!!  
VRISKA: I’m a TOP SHELF CATCH, Strider. The hottest piece of ass in Alternia. And a killer personality to match.  
ROSE: Ha ha.  
VRISKA: You should’ve seen the line of suitors around my house, all of them 8egging for a taste of this.  
ROSE: Alright, I get it. Hate-virgin.  
VRISKA: Shut the f8ck up!!!!!!!!  


After her artificial outburst comes a heady silence. Her eyelashes flutter against your collarbone. You don’t expect her to open up about it; you weren’t even angling for it. Everyone’s got their sore spots. But it doesn’t surprise you when she does prattle on. That is the power of physicality: it cuts to the meat of things. There are few secrets worth keeping from someone who’s measured themselves against their confidant’s primeval reaction to pain, the one secret which all societies have been engineered to conceal.  


VRISKA: There was one guy, he... I wanted to h8 him, I really did.  
VRISKA: 8ut he could never measure up to me, o8viously.  
ROSE: You are impossible to compare to.  


Vriska looks as if she’s not sure whether you just complimented or insulted her. You do not plan on clarifying.  


VRISKA: Fuck you. Anyway.  
VRISKA: Why am I even telling you this?  
ROSE: Because who doesn’t like bitching about their exes to their new date?  
ROSE: Or because I’ll find out anyway after a day or so of insistent snooping. Pick your poison.  
VRISKA: Uuuuuuuugh.  
VRISKA: Shut up until I’m done.  


You mimic a zipping motion across your mouth and settle in for a patient wait.  


VRISKA: So he, okay, his ancestor, do humans have ancestors? Don’t answer. I don’t care and I told you to shut up. His ancestor was my ancestor’s kismesis, and my ancestor was like, THE most 8adass 8itch to ever sail the seas. Which makes me 8y extension the most 8adass 8itch too.  
VRISKA: And I thought, so there’s gotta 8e something special a8out this guy to have kept the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang’s attention for so long. We found her wrecked ship together and everything.  
VRISKA: It felt like f8.  


A fallacy you are all too familiar with.  


VRISKA: 8ut there WASN’T anything cool a8out him! He was jealous and always angry and didn’t even do anything kickass with all the anger.  
VRISKA: And SO unoriginal. I had doomsday machines, Strider, I was going to destroy the whole world. I DID! He had plans to destroy “all the land dwwellers”, can you 8elieve it? I mean, the TINY scope of it.  
VRISKA: And the gall to d8 a land dweller despite all that. Even h8-d8. Talk a8out pathetic.  


When Vriska affects a mockery of her ex’s accent, you can’t help but smile. At the same time, a deranged revelation alights. You resolve to keep listening, because she asked you to, sure, and because you need to know if you’re right.  


VRISKA: I 8roke up with him 8efore we ever got to sex. And I’m glad I did!!!!!!!! He was SO weird a8out women, it would pro8a8ly have sucked.  
VRISKA: He flirted with every girl whose name I know. He got turned down 8y all of them except me, and that’s 8ecause I came on to HIM first. Oh, and Feferi, who’s a pushover, and even then he just ended up 8eing her moirail instead.  
VRISKA: I think he flirted with some 8oys too 8ut that was pro8a8ly pure desper8ion. He killed Feferi and half-killed her m8sprit out of jealousy. Then he died.  
VRISKA: That’s the terri8le tale of my terri8le ex, and now you can 8e glad you don’t have a high 8ar to clear.  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: Holy shit, you dated Eridan Ampora.  


She peels away from you with an “uuuugh” that is many times longer than eight “u”s. You seize the opportunity to lay on her chest, the first time you’ve been atop her in this fledgling relationship. It’s flat. You think of the spark dancing in her lustful eyes, minutes earlier. Before that, the flinch. So you are two cuts of the same cloth.  


ROSE: You’ll find that I’m already worth every second of your time, while he never was.  
VRISKA: Is everything a8out you????????  
ROSE: There must be something magnetic about me, for you to decide to brave the seas of kismesissitude again.  
VRISKA: Yeah, it’s the way you 8r8k into rooms and kick pretty girls in the knee.  
ROSE: You loved it.  
VRISKA: Mm.  
ROSE: You never would’ve trusted him with any of this. I’m smarter and stronger than him, and you know it. That’s why you feel you must surpass me. Said need is the basis for any proper kismesissitude.  
VRISKA: Mmmmmmmm.  


You knew already that trolls each blush the particular color of their blood. But seeing the azure hue creep up Vriska’s cheek up close is much better than “knowing”.  


ROSE: Also, I’m a woman.  
ROSE: You’re a woman too.  


If Vriska notes anything particular about your statement, she doesn’t let it slip. You amplify your efforts by planting one kiss at her jawline, snuggling up beneath her ear and summoning your huskiest purr:  


ROSE: Let me suck your cock.  


Vriska is agog. You don’t dare a single movement, nothing that could scare off this spider who has suddenly turned insectoid in stature. A second passes, a held breath. Her hand comes up to map the topography of your shoulderblades. They’re wide. You will never mince words about it. They do not make you any less of a woman. You have carved your womanhood by force out of this retrograde world, and you intend to keep it that way. You do not claim as much out loud. You only breathe and let her share in that silent conviction. After your shoulders, the back of your neck, and then the fuzzy cropped hairs at the ridge of your skull, which she scratches her fondness upon.  


VRISKA: I 8et it would 8e nice to have another trans girl do that.  
ROSE: It’s a safe bet.  
VRISKA: ...  
VRISKA: Not tonight.  
ROSE: Too tired?  
VRISKA: I was the one getting a workout while you laid down and screamed my name.  
ROSE: Unfair and unrealistic. An orgasm burns hundreds of calories.  
VRISKA: Pillow princess.  
ROSE: Sadist psycho.  
VRISKA: Ditto.  
ROSE: Ditto.  


In truth, you are both enervated far beyond the threshold to carry even this meagre back and forth. You feel light and languorous, and quenched at last. You won’t be able to fall asleep here, with the needling wounds and the unyielding ground. But you close your eyes and plummet into the careless allure of Vriska’s hair, and you rest there, in your newfound knowledge that there is comfort in this world for devils like you.  



End file.
